Joshua Roberts

As a sort of anti-metaphysician I naturally gravitate towards the atheistic; however, it is clear to me the notion of deity is irrefutable and moreover, as a quantum dualist I must admit that the universe is integral in nature and therefore the idea of an integrated network of fields of energy by its own nature connotes something like deity. Although I essentially do not like organized religion in most cases because it historically proves to be hostile to humanity and to the furtherance of what I would consider a justifiable equity in terms of the dispensation of society, I am all for freedom of religion and the mandate that matters regarding church and state be cordoned off from one another. This cordoning is perhaps more and more impossible as the ethical degeneracy of a people increases and as the information within a civilization increases (as it does within ours at an exponential rate! To the extent that in fact we now are literally deluged by synthetic information and much of it is junk information). And yet I feel it is very certain that religions are still fundamentally necessary to our civilization as a whole, the main reason I would say is that they provide a hedge against outright inhumanity – that is not to say that atheists are inherently inhuman, morality itself to me is a perspective, but I must point out that the tendencies of synthetic systems produce synthetic values and without a strong ethical code invite gross inhumanities. Which is worse: an auto-da-fe or factory farming human beings in an economic system of hopeless sterility?

When we perceive the vastness of our universe it seems only natural that some of us would suggest that organic life, indeed, intelligent life probably must exists somewhere else amidst the sea of stars. But a sobering realization occurs to me, rather than formulating drake-like equations, I suggest that by the very same principles for the creation of any such equation we might equally suggest that we are alone. And just imagine that for a moment, it seems much easier for people to imagine that we are not as I find generally two types of humans: one who thinks that there is a god and that we might be alone or that we might not and one that thinks there is exobiology and sentient at that. Indeed there may be sentience out there that takes up the form of a crystalline latticework or pure energy, any number of sci-fi reductions might be postulated; however, what I do not see are people eager to grasp the assumption that we are completely alone. We have sufficient evidence to suggest that we are alone for the time being and until proven otherwise does it not make sense to act as though this were the case? Better yet (and perhaps more to the point) does it not make sense to suspect that if there is intelligent life in the universe, given that we are the only intelligent life we know of, that we would be discreet fearing enslavement by extra terrestrial life? Perhaps we are better off focusing on stabilizing our civilization and pursuing the art of war, not so as to war with one another, but so as to prepare for a potential conflict originating from someplace out in that vast sea.

Really – this is my only point and I have been rambling only to arrive at long last in a way that seems digressive here: god, exobiology, neither of these things should concern us.

What? Should we throw away our two most favorite intellectual toys and grow up?

Yes.

It is time to grow up humanity, noble men and women die of starvation in the mud while arrogant and inhuman despots live in luxury. The earth is a linear system – we have allowed our civilization to be constructed ad hoc at the whim of the most powerful, a Machiavellian ordering has persisted since we first approached a specialized organization of our societies. And now, as the last vestiges of primitive cultures are chased out of their homes by bulldozers, it is dawning on us that the limits of natural abundance are all too real (so much realer than any gods or aliens).

The reaction to this by those with wealth and power is Malthusian at best – how did you think we could stop the preproduction of such a culturalism? How can we avert the centralization of a civilization based on specialization if not via a nodal network approach like organic computing models, how can we produce an emergent civilization while we still labor under archaic constructs like nations, corporations, and worst of all the U.N. ? This is the era of petty kingdoms; the corporation is king, greater than any nation state. Nations themselves only exist as expedients as we enter into a dark age of global corporatism where humanity is little more than fuel to a machine over which ultimately no one has control. How did you think we could stop this trend and become what we are if we did not shake off the cumbersome impositions of such atavistic systems?

You cannot get your hands dirty with such real work until you have put down your toys for awhile. And yes the newest toy is progress, the notion of progress, and this is what I meant by the potential inhumanity of synthetic systems – that we would create a society wherein the human being is nothing more than one more synthetic value!

Think! We have reduced mankind, the sole repository of universal truth, to a mere value within a synthetic system – and the commoditization of the individual advances unchecked! What can the result of such actions be if it is not the destruction of everything good in this world?

We have enough technology: we had enough technology 5 decades ago to produce a civilization we could all be proud of, and here we are chasing the higgs boson while human beings are factory farmed in Indonesia in order to make Gap clothing. Are you not disgusted with yourselves oh my fellow creatures? I am disgusted, those who came before us ( I was born in 1977) from the ancient civilizations, to the pre-Socratic philosophers through to the modern era have created art and opened our minds to ideas of wondrous possibilities – even now science and technology offer us the surest means to overcoming the oppressive linearity of the world in which we find ourselves. And yet, is science not the bitch of markets? Is technology not a slave to the whims of a handful of dominant men? Are not our universities today little more than the tombs and sepulchers of our greatest thinkers?

We ignore our best minds: that is what I see, a society where synthetic values dominate and where the projections of an existing status quo which is itself inimical to life persist and are enshrined by our apathy. I see a world’s population brainwashed, bought and sold before they are even born into a system of control so complete and vexing that escape or dissent are impossible – at best the slaves rattle their shackles and call this fidgeting freedom.

And what are the prima facie hedges against change? Metaphysics and Super-science stand as the gatekeepers of this mad game: we would chase the edge of the universe and ignore the homeless and the depravity of our culture!

Now you might think I am anti-science, but the reverse is true: I am a quantum dualistic physicist. I am working on a theory for “fuel injection” in IEC fusion via Bose-Einstein vortices produced by pulsed high voltage which could solve the reaction rate problem that keeps the technology from being viable. But this is a perfect example of the sorts of things we should emphasize.

Now I don’t mean to discourage particle physics work like LHC, it is instrumental, nor do I mean to do away with cosmology and astrophysics – quite the contrary, I merely seek proportionality in our civilization. I know only all too well how the insights and achievements of thousands of years of psychology and science have been used to enslave humanity.

Here’s a good example: Freud’s psychoanalysis was ripped off and used to create P.R., or another would be how Bohr and Einstein and many others were used to create nuclear weapons. These are crude examples but they will serve as sufficient evidence of the sort of dynamism I mean. For precisely this reason I think Heraclitus wrote his major work in a deliberately difficult to understand fashion, not so as to create an ecclesiastical dogma that only priests or some ruling class could interpret, but to sequester from all greedy and corrupt hands his insights into the nature of existence.

Would that today our best scientific minds were motivated less by greed and aspirations of fame or success, and more by a copious understanding of the extent to which all their predecessors were but cows to a wicked game whose goal is the total enslavement of mankind. But where do the research grants come from!

HAHA! And now you see why we must put away our toys friends – no matter what our profession we must all become POLITICAL. We must all study the humanities and aspire to be statesmen; we must all become good citizens and shoot at princes!

Men of the world wherefore plow

Those fields now that ye Are laid low?

Re-educate thyselves – affix anew

All of value, hitherto, ye knew.

But does anyone read Shelley now? I mean outside the university system as part of some course on literature or poetry? We have need of new arts that condense and transmit the past, because we are overwhelmed by the surfeit of synthetic information. Just to live now one must have ready access to a wide array of synthetic information, so much more than our ancestors. And this is another hedge against any sort of real change in our civilization.

Namely: the way society has been constructed to so deplete the nervous energy of the individual that they are rendered helpless with regard to dissent or reformation. We have been tricked into enslaving ourselves and have become our own prison guards in a concrete jungle we loathe. And yet many do not even see the slavery, the masses sleepwalk through 70-100 years of toil and die clutching a golden pocket watch.

More than anyone I wish perhaps there were a god or aliens, some dues ex machine to draw this drama to a close – but I am ever skeptical and ever vigilant against such things. For I realize these are the traps into which the mind is lured in order to seize hold of it.

My message is simple then: man is a chess player, in it for the game, Liberty, Freedom, Justice – these are not synthetic items which can be seized but forms which must be continually sought. This entire essay then is a plea to my fellow humans to rally and to pursue as a species that which is our greatest hope: our True Potential.